Word.ws English Dictionary

on-

on- prefix: on, at, toward, upon.

Prefix

on-

  1. on, at, toward, upon.
    • oncome, onset, onfall, onlay
    Synonyms:
    en-, epi-, super-, supra-, sur-, hyper-

Synonyms of on-

Forms of on-

alternative forma-
alternative forman-

Origin of on-

From Middle English on-, from Old English on-, an-, from Proto-West Germanic *ana-, from Proto-Germanic *an-, *ana- (“on-”), from Proto-Indo-European *ano-, *nō- (“on”). Cognate with Dutch aan-, German an-, Swedish an-. Doublet of ana-.

Questions about on-

What does on- mean?
On- means on, at, toward, upon.
What part of speech is on-?
On- is a prefix.

Words near on- in the dictionary

  1. on your mark
  2. on your mark, get set, go
  3. on your marks
  4. on your marks, get set, go
  5. on't
  6. on-
  7. on-again off-again
  8. on-again, off-again
  9. on-again-off-again
  10. on-air
  11. on-and-off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on- (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “on-.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on-. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.